


Hitting Bottom

by TW Lewis (gardendoor)



Category: E.R.
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-01-03
Updated: 2001-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-28 19:02:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardendoor/pseuds/TW%20Lewis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Nadine Wilkes dies, Doug Ross tries to sink a little lower and finds an unexpected road buddy on the way down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hitting Bottom

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings and Disclaimers: This story contains explicit descriptions of homosexual sex. If that’s not the droid you’re looking for, move along. The characters belong to Constant C, et al.

Doug slammed the door to the men’s locker room and kicked the nearest locker as viciously as he could. The dent he created did nothing to fix his mood. How dare Mark! Taking over like that in the middle of the OR, humiliating him in front of the patient, in front of everyone!

So he hadn’t known her name. It happened. You couldn’t quite hear over the noise at a club, and felt embarrassed to ask later, as though asking a girl to repeat her name made it clear that her name wasn’t important enough to remember. That she wasn’t important enough. If she hadn’t gone into seizures and died on the operating table, no one would have cared that he hadn’t known Nadine Wilkes.

Something moved in the corner of his eye and Doug belatedly realized he wasn’t alone in the locker room. Carter. The man looked almost as bad as Doug felt: baggy-eyed, gray, faced, disheveled. He walked over to Doug with his mouth set in a grim line.

“Whatever it is, Carter, I’m not in the mood.”

Carter ignored him. He marched up, grabbed Doug by the collar, and pushed him backwards into the corner where the door to the janitor’s closet created a blind spot in the room.

“Carter, what are you doing?”

Carter didn’t seem to hear him. He dropped to his knees, unzipped Doug’s pants, and eased out his penis. Then he bent his head and started to lick it, letting his tongue slip over the head and tease the slit.

Doug closed his eyes and let the sensations wash over him. The world had just stopped making sense. What the hell was Carter thinking? What if someone walked in on them? At that thought, Doug’s fist clenched in Carter’s hair. Let them walk in. It wasn’t like Doug’s reputation could fall much farther.

Carter had licked Doug’s cock from top to bottom with enthusiasm and skill that would have put a thousand-dollar hooker to shame, and now he took the shaft into his mouth, sliding it deep down his throat without any trouble. His tongue teased the underside of the cock and he sucked hard, bobbing up and down rhythmically. He made a small cry in the back of his throat like a wounded animal, and he clutched Doug’s ass, urging the older man to thrust deeper down his throat.

By this point Doug couldn’t have resisted if he wanted to. He thrust deep into Carter’s hot, eager mouth, gripping his hair tighter and tighter. His head tilted back.

His orgasm felt like a dragon uncoiling in his belly. He shot his rage and grief and self-loathing deep into Carter’s throat and Carter swallowed every drop like manna from heaven. As Doug slowly came back to earth, Carter stood up, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and walked out without a word, leaving Doug confused beyond words.

*****

Next day on shift Doug looked for Carter up in Peeds. The young doctor was chatting with a teary-eyed five-year-old, juggling two baseballs and an apple to distract the kid while a nurse drew blood. Benton fidgeted in the doorway, but threw Doug a look of pure disgust which seemed to ease his own discomfort. Looked like the Nadine Wilkes incident didn’t meet Benton’s stringent code of honor. Well, that was no surprise.

“Was there something you needed, Dr. Ross?” asked Benton.

“Nah, I just needed to borrow your student.”

Carter looked up with the same expression of eager curiosity he bestowed on any doctor offering to let him operate. He turned back and tossed the apple to the little kid. “See you later, Stevie.”

He followed Doug out into the hallway. “What do you need me for, Dr. Ross?”

Doug stepped into an empty operating room and closed the door behind Carter. He opened his mouth to speak, then paused when he saw Carter’s innocent face. He tried again. “Look, I think we need to talk.” No response. “About yesterday.”

Carter laughed nervously. “I don’t know--”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about you blowing me in the locker room.”

Carter blushed and looked away. “I thought you wouldn’t say no.”

Doug exhaled through flared nostrils. He decided to change the subject. “I thought you were straight, I mean, God knows you’ve had enough girlfriends.”

“I am straight.”

While Doug tried to find some way to ask Carter where a straight man learned to suck dick like that, Carter interrupted him. “Dr. Ross, I think there’s only two things we need to discuss. Are you going to report me?”

“No.”

Carter’s voice dropped. “Do you want me to stop?”

Doug froze. Was Carter offering to do it again? “No,” he finally managed. “No, I don’t want you to stop.”

Carter shot him a relieved smile. “Stevie’s due for surgery in a couple of hours. I should get back and walk his mom through the procedure.” He walked out again, leaving Doug gripping an instrument tray for support.

Confused didn’t begin to describe Doug’s state of mind. What the hell was going on here? The kid was one of the most promising young doctors Doug had ever seen; was it possible that Carter had simply snapped under the pressure without anyone noticing? Doug had heard Benton was a hellish taskmaster, but he hadn’t broken a student yet. And if Benton was the problem, why would Carter elect to follow him from department to department after their first year of working together? No, whatever was wrong went far deeper than problems at work.

Morally, Doug had a responsibility to investigate, try and help Carter in some way. But the thought of that velvet mouth coaxing him to another orgasm made Doug groan out loud. Doug had never been too good with moral responsibilities.

Instead, he went back to work, butting heads with Mark and Weaver for the privilege of doing his job. Carol was still barely speaking to him. Even Jerry seemed to look down on him. But when he went off shift, Carter was in the men’s locker room, studiously untying and retying his left shoe.

Doug and Mark ignored each other while they undressed and changed into street clothes. Doug felt strangely self-conscious as he stripped, knowing Carter was stealing glances at his naked back. Plus, he had to go slower than Mark so that he would have an excuse to stay in the locker room after Mark left. He could feel Carter’s eyes on him, watching the lines of his bare shoulders as he shrugged on a dress shirt. He’d seen Carter naked a hundred times in the years they’d worked together, but male etiquette meant he’d never really looked. He wondered if there was poetry in that patrician form. Would a beautiful male body arouse Doug if he let it? Would it turn him on like its female counterparts, or did his attraction begin and end at the exquisite boundaries of Carter’s talented mouth?

As soon as Mark was gone, Doug hurried back to the blind spot and opened the trousers he had just zipped up. Carter fell to his knees again and got to work, kissing and licking the swollen head of Doug’s cock.

This time Doug didn’t close his eyes. He watched the urgency on Carter’s face give way to a look of peace as the lines of tension slid from his high brow and slim shoulders. Carter needed this, Doug realized. Needed it. As Carter accepted Doug’s cock into the depths of his throat, Doug stroked Carter’s cheek. The younger man shivered in response. His slender, skilled fingers slid up to trace the texture of Doug’s balls, moving underneath to touch a hidden spot that made Doug’s vision white out. Prostate, Doug thought. A couple of his girlfriends had played with it before, but none had known exactly how much pressure to use. Carter touched it again, mutely begging Doug to come. Doug complied, surging blindly into Carter’s mouth, spilling his load of hot fluid in a series of desperate thrusts.

He collapsed against Carter, resting in Carter’s mouth for a long moment. “Come on,” he said finally, when he was able to move and speak again, “I’ll buy you a drink. The least I can do after treatment like that is to wash the taste out of your mouth.”

“I’m on until three,” said Carter, straightening. “I have to get back before Benton misses me.”

Doug frowned. That was clearly a brush-off. “I’ll see you later,” he said.

*****

Over the next couple of weeks, things continued in much the same vein. Every few days Doug or Carter would conspire to catch the other alone, and Carter would suck Doug off. Each time it got more intense: the mixture of fear over getting caught and the subtle signs of tenderness and vulnerability they allowed each other was a powerful elixir.

And then they would go back to work. Outside of those rendezvous, it was as though nothing was going on. Carter’s professional attitude helped cover any lapses on Doug’s part, clearly he had more practice leading a double life. Which lead back to Doug feeling guilty that he hadn’t investigated Carter’s problems, or even returned the favor. If he’d gained anything from the whole mess with Nadine, it was a cold, unflinching look at his selfish, sybaritic, pointless life. Outside of his career as a doctor, he was a scumbag who didn’t care about anyone or anything except his own pleasure. He’d goaded Carol into trying to kill herself, even if she tried to deny that he’d been the cause, and God only knew how many other women he’d hurt. He couldn’t use Carter like that. The kid was clearly too near the breaking point, and Doug couldn’t handle being the cause of yet another ruined life.

He paged Carter with a brief message: ‘7:00 Tonight, Ambulance Bay.’ He’d checked the schedule and Carter got off work then.

The ambulance bay was freezing at night. Doug shivered by the door as five minutes passed, then ten minutes. Carter seemed to dislike talking when they were together. Maybe meeting like this was against the unspoken rules, and Carter had decided not to come.

But no, here he was, hurrying out with his hands deep in the pockets of his long black coat. He glanced at Doug and went around the corner, where Doug caught up with him.

“So what’s wrong?” said Carter.

“Nothing’s wrong,” said Doug. He got into the driver’s seat of his car and leaned over to open the passenger door. “Coming?”

They were both nervous during the ride to Doug’s apartment. Carter kept shifting in his seat. It was the first time they’d been alone together in weeks without anything untoward occurring. Neither of them spoke. They didn’t even look at each other. *I’m sorry,* Doug thought, *I don’t have a lot of practice being a decent human being.*

Doug had wine and the makings of fondue at his house. Fondue was Doug’s mainstay for awkward situations because it was simple, making it required enough attention that he had an excuse to look away if a conversation suddenly went dead, and if things were going well, it was easy and fun to feed the other person.

Carter laughed when Doug took the ingredients out of the fridge and started mixing the apple cider and lemon juice. “Somehow I never pictured you cooking.”

“Ah, chicks love a man who can cook,” said Doug.

“I never really learned how. I probably should,” said Carter.

“I’m not surprised, you probably had servants cooking for you your whole life, am I right?”

Carter ducked his head, as usual sensitive about his background. “Yeah, but now I have a roommate, and he expects me to pitch in.” He hopped up on the countertop like a kid.

“How’s it working out with Gant?”

“Pretty well.” He paused. “Actually, I don’t know. I mean, lately he seems kind of, I don’t know. Girlfriend trouble, I guess. I just haven’t felt comfortable talking to him about it.”

That was as good an opening as Doug could hope for. “How long have you been doing this?”

“What do you mean? We’ve been doing this a couple of weeks now.”

“Carter, that first time you were already working like a pro. Don’t tell me you’d never been with another guy before.”

“Look, Dr. Ross--”

“Doug. You can’t suck me off for two weeks and call me Dr. Ross, okay? And don’t tell me you don’t feel comfortable discussing this. If you weren’t comfortable talking about it, you should never have started this in the first place.”

Carter stared at his shoes for a long while. “I don’t know. It’s been going on a while. I started picking up guys, letting them suck me. Then I started doing them instead; that felt a little more like what I wanted. Maybe on some level I want to get caught, maybe that’s why I chose you.”

Doug suddenly felt cold. “We haven’t been using condoms.”

“Aside from you, I’ve been having safe sex. And I know you play it safe, that’s half the reason I picked you. But I thought the first time that you would stop me if I slowed down to put on a condom, and after that it seemed like closing the barn door.”

“So what’s the other half?” asked Doug. “Why do you do it?”

“Why do you let me?”

“What?” asked Doug. He suddenly realized that the cider was burning. He scrambled to turn down the heat and add the gruyere cheese and the spices.

“Why do you let me do it?”

Doug winced. “I guess I wanted to prove I could still sink lower than I already had. I wanted to do something that could still shock people.” He turned away, carefully stirring the sweet-smelling mixture. “And I’ve started liking it. Look, John--”

“Carter. Call me Carter,” he said. “It feels weird when you say my first name.”

Which was weird, because Doug had heard Carter’s girlfriends call him John. Well, they were both in strange territory, and he could understand if Carter didn’t want him to change the way they talked to each other. “Okay, Carter. I don’t know about you, but this is starting to mean something to me, and frankly I’ve screwed up enough people’s lives lately that I don’t want to add you to the list. Have you thought about seeing a shrink? Figuring out what all this is about?”

“My family isn’t big on psychiatrists. Gamma calls them the vice of the middle class.”

Doug grinned despite himself. “Come here and make yourself useful. You can cube the French bread. Even you can’t mess that up.”

They had fun feeding each other off the long fondue forks, and Carter made a few jokes that left Doug gasping for air. But after watching Carter wipe a stray drop of sauce off his lips and kiss it off his slender finger, Doug couldn’t resist the urge to kiss those lips himself.

Carter’s mouth was firm and warm against his own, and those long, slender fingers came up to stroke the stubble of Doug’s hair and pull him closer. His lips explored Doug’s mouth, his cheeks, his chin, the tip of his nose. He was shivering, his teeth chattered, though the kitchen was warm.

Doug laughed into Carter’s mouth as they kissed. It had been so long since he felt so alive with anyone, since he wasn’t just on autopilot. Not just alive, but tender. He hadn’t felt this way since Carol. But with a man?

Apparently.

They continued like this for a long while, then Doug broke the kiss. “C’mon, I want to try something.” He took Carter’s hand and led him into the bedroom. The lighting was good, a warm glow, but aside from that Doug felt awkward with the lack of romantic flourishes in his bedroom. He hated having company this important without pulling out all the stops, but what exactly did you do when you were expecting a man instead of a woman? Roses? Irises? Mood music? Black silk sheets? Ordinary, ‘manly’ cotton sheets? “You’re going to have to be a little patient; I’ve never done this before. I mean, I’ve never done this before with a guy.”

Carter laughed. “Trust me, it’s a lot easier than you think it’s going to be. It’s a lot of fun, too.” He ducked his head and looked up at Doug expectantly.

Doug gripped Carter’s sweater-vest in both fists and pulled it off. But when Carter reached for Doug’s belt, Doug shook his head. “This is *my* show.” He pushed Carter’s hands away and unbuttoned Carter’s blue Oxford, slipped khaki pants down athletically slim legs. Carter kicked off his shoes, and Doug was left staring at a pale, muscular body interrupted by a pair of red silk boxers which hid what promised to be an impressive swelling. Doug hooked the elastic with two fingers and pulled down, and a large, rosy cock bobbed up to greet him, bouncing against his stomach.

Carter finally broke the silence. “So what are the rules here, Doug?” His voice was slightly hoarse.

Doug smirked. “Well, I was planning on turning the tables and thanking you for all the stuff you’ve done for me, but now that we’re here, I don’t quite know what to do. You’d think after all these years of owning one,” he indicated Carter’s cock with a tilt of his head, “I’d have the user’s manual memorized.”

Carter laughed. “I never thought I’d have the chance to talk you through a procedure.”

“Yeah, well, a hotshot surgeon like you should get used to training your elders. With luck, maybe you’ll get to boss Weaver around sometime.”

“Not like this, I hope,” said Carter.

Doug suddenly got an image of Carter in the ER, beautifully nude, murmuring ‘visualize the chords...’ He shook his head to clear it. “Okay, so what do I do?”

“A good way to start is to pretend it’s your own. Try to picture what you would want done to yourself at that moment, and then imagine you’re doing it to yourself.”

Worth a try. Doug gave Carter a light shove to drop him onto the bed, then lay down on his side, curled up, so that he was perpendicular to Carter’s midsection. The younger surgeon tucked his hands behind his head, stretching out fully and smiling down at Doug. Doug reached out and touched Carter’s penis with one careful hand.

The texture was bizarrely like his own, a silky head above a shaft with a slightly more oily, papery feel. The strangeness came because for the first time in his life, Doug was arousing a cock and not receiving the feedback from the nerves he stimulated. He skimmed his fingers lightly back and forth over the skin, watched Carter stretch upward in a search for a firmer stroke. Doug ignored that need, teasing Carter almost absent-mindedly while he figured out what he wanted to do.

He got up on his knees so that he would have both hands free, and moved around so that he was now straddling Carter’s legs. Then he bent his head and lightly kissed the head of Carter’s cock. The silky texture felt good against his mouth, and Doug played it from side to side, running his tongue along the underside of the head. He didn’t notice much of a taste yet, but the scent was pleasantly similar to the smell of old books.

Carter’s hands were no longer behind his head, they were poised just above Doug’s head. Doug smirked as he liked his way up and down the shaft. Carter definitely enjoyed the teasing pace, but was ready for something more. Doug had no intention of giving it to him. After all the times Carter had made him completely incoherent, he was more than ready for some payback.

He moved lower, slipping first one ball and then the other into his mouth, washing them gently with his tongue and sucking lightly on them. He tried to picture what it would feel like, to make sure he didn’t suck too hard. The thought of Carter’s mouth on his balls nearly made him lose all control.

That’s when the doorbell rang.

“I don’t believe this,” Carter groaned.

“I’ll be right back.” Doug stood up and straightened his collar, closing the bedroom door before he went to answer the doorbell. It was Mark. “Ah, hi, what’s going on?”

Mark pressed his lips together. “Look, Doug, we’ve all been giving you a really hard time this week. I mean, I think it’s justified, and you need to start living your life differently, but I just wanted to make it clear that if we’re hard on you, it’s because we care about you, and we hate seeing you screw up your life like this.”

“Uh-huh? Yeah, well, thanks Mark. I’ll keep that in mind.” Doug leaned on the door frame, blocking most of Mark’s view.

Mark looked past Doug, saw the two wine glasses, the fondue pot, the closed bedroom door. “I don’t believe this.”

“What?” Doug snapped.

“You’re unbelievable. I came here to see if we’d pushed you too far, but obviously I shouldn’t have worried. Do you even know her name this time?”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Doug said. “You don’t lecture me enough at work, you have to come and harass me at home?”

“I came here because I’m your friend--”

“You are not my friend, all right? You’re my god-damned case worker. Now why don’t you get the hell out of here before you really piss me off.” He closed the door in Mark’s face and went back to the bedroom.

Carter was sitting up with a pained expression on his face. “You know, he really cares about you. Maybe you should tell him you’re okay--”

“Don’t you start on me too, Carter,” said Doug. He stopped. “I’m sorry. I guess this just killed the mood, didn’t it?”

Carter smiled and reached for his shirt on the floor. “I guess that’s my cue to leave.”

“No, wait.” Doug touched his arm. “I’d like you to stay.” When Carter paused, Doug slowly stripped and slipped into bed nude. He spooned up behind Carter and reached back to flip the light switch off.

*****

Things continued like this for some time. Mostly they met in the locker room, and the few times someone nearly walked in on them just made everything more intense. Sometimes Doug would take Carter home and make a night of it, though those were rarer. Partly that was because it was difficult to find a night when they both weren’t due back on shift in a few hours, and partly because Carter really preferred the locker room. Doug kept trying to get him to talk about it, but he was afraid that if he pushed too hard, Carter might leave.

And that was the scary thing for Doug. He was afraid of Carter leaving. He’d never let anyone get their hooks that deep into him, not even Carol. Not after how his Dad had abandoned him and his mother over and over again. And here he was, hopelessly in love, with the absolute knowledge that it could never work out.

Why? Because Carter wasn’t in love, that much was clear. He was loving, sure, but he was working something out and Doug was a convenient target. John Carter would never abandon his familial obligations to proclaim his homosexuality and shack up with Doug. So, much as Doug worried about Carter, he had a vested interest in keeping Carter crazy. Because the instant Carter was cured, it would all be over.

*****

Doug was asleep when the pager went off. He fished on the floor for his scrubs, then stumbled out the door, still only half awake. He rolled the car window down as he drove to the hospital, hoping the freezing air could help him wake up.

The hospital seemed quiet enough when he got there, nothing to warrant getting him out of a nice warm bed. But Weaver was “What’s going on?” he asked Jerry.

Jerry winced. “Gant’s street pizza.”

“What?”

“He jumped in front of the El. I heard there wasn’t enough of him left for an ID. They figured out it was him when they paged him and the guy on the table started ringing.”

Doug froze. “Does Carter know?”

“Carter and Benton pronounced him. Carter freaked out, nearly punched Benton.”

“I’ve got to go find him.”  


  
“Who, Benton? Forget it, Weaver sent them both home. And they need you here cause they’re minus two doctors now.”

Doug turned and sprinted for the locker room.

“Doctor Ross!” Jerry yelled, but Doug was gone.

Carter was curled up in their special corner, his teeth chattering, his face blotchy with tears. “I killed him,” he said when Doug knelt beside him. “He kept asking me for a second of my time, he just needed someone to talk to, and I was so damn busy fucking you I couldn’t pay attention for one damn second--”

He broke into fresh tears, choking, sick on his own grief. Doug tried to put his arms around him, but Carter jerked away. “I don’t deserve it! I don’t deserve your sympathy! I didn’t have any for him!”

Doug helplessly watched Carter rocking back and forth, teeth chattering with the force of his crying. He knew one thing that would calm Carter down, though he wished Carter would open up for once and talk to him.

Doug stood up and eased his flaccid cock out of his drawstring scrubs. Carter looked up when he felt it brush his cheek, and took the member into his mouth like a starving man. The suction was more powerful than anything Doug had ever experienced, he was raging hard in seconds. But despite the ferocious urgency of Carter’s mouth, the rest of his face was as peaceful as a nursing child’s. Doug’s ploy had done the trick. He dared to reach down and stroke Carter’s hair as the younger man consumed him, the only comfort Carter might accept. But the urgent sucking was making Ross harder and harder, and it was getting difficult to think straight. “Ohh, oh Christ that’s good--!”

The door slammed open. “Doug, we need--” Mark froze in the doorway, staring at the two of them with the same shock and growing horror that they stared at him. It was only a moment, then Mark backed out of the room as fast as he’d entered it.

Doug pulled out of Carter’s mouth and knelt beside him. “You going to be all right?” Before Carter could answer, he said “ _Stay_ here.” Then he hurried after Mark.

He found Mark halfway down the hallway, leaning against the wall. Mark’s face was as green as his scrubs, and he was biting his fist to stay in control.

Doug decided he knew Mark well enough by now to read his mind. “I know you think I’d stick it in mud if I thought it would wriggle, but that’s not what’s going on here. This is not about…” he stopped for a moment as Haleh walked by, then continued once she was out of earshot. “This is not about me pushing the envelope. This has been going on for a while. I haven’t felt this way since Carol, and I’d die before doing anything to screw this up.”

Mark withdrew the fist from his mouth. “It’s not that I’m a homophobe, I’d just never seen…”

“I know.”

“I heard what happened to Gant. Carter’s upset right now. If you do anything--”

“I won’t do to Carter what I did to Carol. He’s not going to come in here needing a stomach pump.”

“You swear?”

“You’re not the one I need to swear to, Mark.”

Mark seemed to take that as it was intended: an admission of maturity rather than a gesture of defiance. There was a glimmer of respect in Mark’s eyes now, something Doug thought he’d lost forever. “We need you in surgery. It’s a mess out here.”

“Let me make sure Carter’s all right,” said Doug. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

Mark nodded. “I’ll cover for you.”

*****

Carter was still there when Doug came back, and though he looked withdrawn, his arms curled around his chest as he sat on a changing bench, at least he wasn’t still hysterical in the corner. Doug sat beside him and started rubbing Carter’s back, and was gratified when Carter didn’t pull away.

“I talked to Mark. He’s a little weirded out, but he’s not going to tell anyone about us. How’re you doing?”

Carter stared at his shoes. “I should have been there.”

“Yeah, you should have. But Gant had teachers and family and other friends to lean on, too. It didn’t help that you weren’t there, but he didn’t kill himself because of you.” The next part came less easily. “Carol tried to kill herself because of me. I know what that looks like, what it feels like. This isn’t it.”

Carter looked at him, his expression softening. “I remember. It was my first day here.” He leaned into Doug’s embrace gingerly. “This feels weird.”

“You can suck me off six times before breakfast in a locker room and hugging feels weird?” Doug tried to keep the tone light. He’d hoped his confession about Carol would make Carter feel obliged to confess in turn, and he didn’t want to risk Carter clamming up.

“I guess the threat of getting caught was part of what turned me on. That’s why it was better with you than with the men I … hired. I needed to prove I wasn’t the perfect scion of the Carter family; it turned me on, kneeling, servicing you, hearing you call me by my family name. All my cousins have found their private sins, ways to fight off family expectations, but drugs and women are rich men’s sins. Accepted, even if they’re not acceptable. I wanted something no one could sweep under the carpet. I didn’t … I used you. I’m sorry.”

It was over. Carter had worked it out, and was ready to move on. Doug gulped. “I guess I couldn’t expect it to last forever,” he said.

Carter looked at him. “You’re not mad that I was using you?”  


  
“I was using you too,” said Doug, pulling away. He had to get on duty before Mark braved the risk of seeing two grown men together and came into the locker room to get him. “It just changed for me. I kept hoping it would change for you, but--”

Carter’s fingers caught his arm in a surprisingly strong grip. He stood, looking Doug in the eye, then leaned in and kissed him softly on the mouth.

“Carter...?”

“Call me John.”

End.


End file.
